Amazon's Prime Day sales jumps 60 per cent

Ralph Mccoy | July 14, 2016, 16:44

Amazon's Prime Day sales jumps 60 per cent

"Others have to think harder about how they're going to compete with Amazon".

Retailers did see a 13% rise in traffic on Prime Day compared to a typical day, but not the 75% spike HookLogic saw a year ago. But it also suggests there's been a significant increase in members of Amazon's Prime subscription scheme over the past year.

Amazon said yesterday's second annual Prime Day promotion was another one for the record books. The message from the event is clear: It's not enough just to give customers good shipping deals (Walmart, we're looking at you). "After yesterday's results, we'll definitely be doing this again", said Amazon executive Greg Greeley.

The special sale day included various deals on Amazon-branded products like Kindles and Alexa-enabled home devices, and had Prime members on the site looking for all kinds of deals. Of course, Prime also includes access to tens of thousands of movies and TV shows through Prime Video, as well as Prime Music, Prime Photos, Kindle First, and other perks. The analysis found that 38 percent of overall sentiment on Prime Dayrelated to sadness, down from 50 percent past year.

Although some data suggest third party sellers, or people who sell their products on Amazon's site, saw roughly flat sales growth, Amazon says they saw orders almost triple compared to last year's Prime Day.

In a statementAmazon claims members globally saved more than double on deals over Prime Day 2015 - naming the Fire TV Stick and Trunki Ride-On Suitcase as the two biggest sellers.

Headphones had a big day too, with 200,000 pairs selling throughout the day. Many sellers offered deals to Prime members, which resulted in orders almost triple year-over-year on Prime Day.

But the real benefit of Prime Day may not be measurable in simple dollar figures. Stock up on staples that you always use (think toilet paper or mac and cheese), replace every day items (think socks or kitchen storage containers) or buy now and gift later on items with exceptional savings (Amazon Echo or Amazon Fire tablets). It sold more of its Echo voice-controlled speakers than ever before - more than 2.5 times as many as its previous record day. Many Amazon Prime subscribers took to Twitter Tuesday morning to complain about "add to cart fail" messages generated when they attempted to purchase sale-priced items. The event got off to a rocky start when many shoppers experienced struggles navigating the digital checkout process.

Robot vacuums: In the U.S., more than 23,000 iRobot Roomba 614 vacuum cleaning robots were purchased.